All Songs Considered

1:10 pm

Fri January 25, 2013

First Watch: Adam Green & Binki Shapiro

Adam Green (The Moldy Peaches) and singer Binki Shapiro (Little Joy) were both going through breakups when they wrote "Just To Make Me Feel Good," a deceptively breezy cut from the duo's debut, self-titled collection of late '60s folk-pop. In their new video for the song, Green and Shapiro wander the city streets, lamenting a lost love and all the little things each of them took for granted.

Green was living in New York and Shapiro in Los Angeles while they wrote this and other cuts for the album Adam Green & Binki Shapiro, often flying to meet and share lyrics. In an email Green says, "I was criticizing an ex-girlfriend, and then remembered that she did all these small things just to make me feel good."

Love is complicated and sometimes we resent the ones we're with for all their kindness. It's "hard to hate someone who does things just to make you feel good," Binki writes. "But dammit, we'll try!"

The split-screen in the video is meant, in part, to convey how the two characters are both alone and together. Director Malia James says "the idea behind the video is a manifestation of my longtime fascination with the idea of synchronicity. I have often wondered about the possibility of someone being a block away from the love of their life for years, but never crossing paths."